有句英文成语说,一张图胜过千言万语(A picture is worth a thousand words)。好图用于传递真理和引人向善的信息,的确能起到巨大的正面作用,可是,图画这个强大的视觉工具,如果被利用来传递根本上虚假错误的信息,那么,一张图也坏过千言万语。
海克尔1866年绘制的错误的人类系统进化树(The tree of life as seen by Haeckel in The Evolution of Man. By Ernst Haeckel – First version from en.wikipedia; description page was here. Later versions derived from this scan, from the American Philosophical Society Museum. Public Domain)
美国贝灵厄姆研究所所长(Bellingham Research Institute, Bellingham, Washington)、阿勒格尼-辛格研究所基因组科学中心基因组学和生物信息学兼职教授(Genomics and Bioinformatics at the Allegheny-Singer Research Institute’s Center for Genomic Sciences)、美国罗切斯特大学生物学名誉教授(Professor Emeritus of Biology, University of Rochester)巴里‧霍尔(Barry G. Hall)在2013年《分子生物学与进化》期刊上发表的关于如何构建系统发育树的指导性文章这样写道:
“(做)系统发育分析最基本的假设是,一棵树上的所有基因序列都是同源的,即来自一个共同的祖先。无论是否同源,都会用这个假设来比对基因序列。所有系统树都会根据该对齐方式构建。然而,如果这些序列实际上不是来自共同祖先,那么这棵树将毫无意义,而且很可能会产生误导。”²⁴⁰(The most basic assumption of phylogenetic analysis is that all the sequences on a tree are homologous, that is, descended from a common ancestor. Alignment programs will align sequences, homologous or not. All tree-building programs will make a tree from that alignment. However, if the sequences are not actually descended from a common ancestor, the tree will be meaningless and may quite well be misleading. )
正当科学家倍感困惑的时候,2018年,英国白金汉大学天体生物学家、美国密歇根州生物物理中心的一批学者与来自澳洲的学者大胆地在《生物物理学和分子生物学进展》(Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology)上发表论文提出,章鱼可能是寒武纪大爆发时,附着在彗星上降落在地球的生物。²⁴⁸
早在1989年,享誉世界的美国国家科学院院士、美国遗传学会主席迈克尔‧林奇(Michael Lynch, 1951—)在《进化》(Evolution)期刊上发表文章指出:“进行亲缘树分析时可能出现很多问题。如果物种之间的分歧只是由于随机漂移和突变引起,六个或更多物种之间距离的系统发育树几乎总是包含拓扑错误。……进一步考虑到物种之间不断的选择差异,将导致完全消除准确建树的可能性,当然也包括系统发育树的分支点。”(Even with enormous amounts of data, phylogenetic trees fitted to the distances among six or more species will almost always contain topological errors if the mode of divergence has been random drift and mutation. ……Moreover, on closer consideration, it appears that the realization of the assumption of constant selection differentials between species would eliminate completely the possibility of identifying the branch points in a phylogeny.)²⁵⁰